Liturgy at Ground Level

(Excerpt) On the back yard of our parish lot is a patch of ground I drive by every day. It is the place where we have a bonfire of trees and greens on the Twelfth Night of Christmas. Each Ash Wednesday, if it is not covered by snow, it is a blackened smudge on the face of the lawn. By Easter, however, that patch seems the most alive. For there the green blade rises, unhindered by dead overgrowth, looking even greener against the charred earth

Slow epidemic extinction in populations with heterogeneous infection rates

We explore how heterogeneity in the intensity of interactions between people affects epidemic spreading. For that, we study the susceptible-infected-susceptible model on a complex network, where a link connecting individuals $i$ and $j$ is endowed with an infection rate $\beta_{ij} = \lambda w_{ij}$ proportional to the intensity of their contact $w_{ij}$, with a distribution $P(w_{ij})$ taken from face-to-face experiments analyzed in Cattuto $et\;al.$ (PLoS ONE 5, e11596, 2010). We find an extremely slow decay of the fraction of infected individuals, for a wide range of the control parameter $\lambda$. Using a distribution of width $a$ we identify two large regions in the $a-\lambda$ space with anomalous behaviors, which are reminiscent of rare region effects (Griffiths phases) found in models with quenched disorder. We show that the slow approach to extinction is caused by isolated small groups of highly interacting individuals, which keep epidemic alive for very long times. A mean-field approximation and a percolation approach capture with very good accuracy the absorbing-active transition line for weak (small $a$) and strong (large $a$) disorder, respectively

The Monsters at the End of This Book( Introduction and Chapter 1 of A Glorious Dark: Finding Hope in the Tension Between Belief and Experience)

Excerpt: When I was a kid, a free-flowing river meandered its way through my backyard. My family loved rivers. We always lived near one. Growing up in dark, drippy, soulful Oregon winters, I’d watch the death of January conquer, year after year, the once free-flowing and wild Willamette River. By mid-month, during the muffled silence of cold, a deep, bone-chilling freeze would halt every living thing upon the face of our backyard. The Willamette fell victim with the rest. The river looked dead—frozen dead. But the frozen river wasn’t really dead. My old man would tell me that underneath that cold, dark, seemingly dead surface was a wild, powerful, primal flow that untrained eyes couldn’t imagine. You had to believe it was alive. Rushing waves lurked underneath the stillness of death, as powerful as ever. Dad knew it was there, below the surface. I believed it was there too

More Than Machines?

We know that robots are just machines. Why then do we often talk about them as if they were alive? Laura Voss explores this fascinating phenomenon, providing a rich insight into practices of animacy (and inanimacy) attribution to robot technology: from science-fiction to robotics R&D, from science communication to media discourse, and from the theoretical perspectives of STS to the cognitive sciences. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, and backed by a wealth of empirical material, Voss shows how scientists, engineers, journalists - and everyone else - can face the challenge of robot technology appearing »a little bit alive« with a reflexive and yet pragmatic stance

More Than Machines? The Attribution of (In)Animacy to Robot Technology

We know that robots are just machines. Why then do we often talk about them as if they were alive? The author explores this fascinating phenomenon, providing a rich insight into practices of animacy (and inanimacy) attribution to robot technology: from science-fiction to robotics R&D, from science communication to media discourse, and from the theoretical perspectives of STS to the cognitive sciences. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, and backed by a wealth of empirical material, the author shows how scientists, engineers, journalists - and everyone else - can face the challenge of robot technology appearing "a little bit alive" with a reflexive and yet pragmatic stance

A different perspective on groupers through scientific illustration techniques in Portugal

In our last Newsletter, I published a short note announcing my new book “Face to Face with Groupers”. The book is finally completed and I have begun its distribution worldwide. Although I was always shy when talking about my own work illustrating groupers, I realized that, for many people, it is a novelty. I hope that you are all able to get a copy to enjoy a different perspective on groupers through scientific illustration techniques, portraying them as if they were alive and interacting with the reader – at least, I tried to show them in this way.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Evangelical Friend, October 1971 (Vol. 5, No. 2)

From the Managing Editor A look into your magazine - with testimonies, reactions, dreams, and possible projections for the future. Page 2 Editorials Religious balance (a look at current phenomena in the church),Describing your church. Page 5 Authentic fire Southwest Regional Editor Verlin O. Hinshaw, professor at Friends University, addresses himself to the strengthening of the local church. Page 6 \u27Situation Ethics\u27 Christians ... must clearly state ... how Christ\u27s teachings are principles of guidance for a dismayed generation wandering in a moral fog. Page 8 \u27Friends Alive\u27 winners The George Fox Press Christian Education Consultant reports on winners in the Friends Alive project and introduces Friends Alive - Phase II. Page 9 Missionary Voice 1969--the year of the American Indian 10Rough Rock Friends Mission 10Proper Preparations 12This month\u27s significant developments 12His Church 13Friends in the Mission scene 14 Smoking -- good, bad, or indifferent Some physical and scriptural reasons why smoking should not be a part of the dedicated Christian\u27s life. Page 16 Regular features The Face of the World 4Friends Write 4Reach and Teach 15Over the Teacup 17The Children\u27s Page 18Books 19 ---------- Northwest Supplementhttps://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/nwym_evangelical_friend/1047/thumbnail.jp

Multivoxel Patterns in Face-Sensitive Temporal Regions Reveal an Encoding Schema Based on Detecting Life in a Face

More than a decade of research has demonstrated that faces evoke prioritized processing in a ‘core face network’ of three brain regions. However, whether these regions prioritize the detection of global facial form (shared by humans and mannequins) or the detection of life in a face has remained unclear. Here, we dissociate form-based and animacy-based encoding of faces by using animate and inanimate faces with human form (humans, mannequins) and dog form (real dogs, toy dogs). We used multivariate pattern analysis of BOLD responses to uncover the representational similarity space for each area in the core face network. Here, we show that only responses in the inferior occipital gyrus are organized by global facial form alone (human vs dog) while animacy becomes an additional organizational priority in later face-processing regions: the lateral fusiform gyri (latFG) and right superior temporal sulcus. Additionally, patterns evoked by human faces were maximally distinct from all other face categories in the latFG and parts of the extended face perception system. These results suggest that once a face configuration is perceived, faces are further scrutinized for whether the face is alive and worthy of social cognitive resources

More Than Machines?

We know that robots are just machines. Why then do we often talk about them as if they were alive? Laura Voss explores this fascinating phenomenon, providing a rich insight into practices of animacy (and inanimacy) attribution to robot technology: from science-fiction to robotics R&D, from science communication to media discourse, and from the theoretical perspectives of STS to the cognitive sciences. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, and backed by a wealth of empirical material, Voss shows how scientists, engineers, journalists - and everyone else - can face the challenge of robot technology appearing »a little bit alive« with a reflexive and yet pragmatic stance